Apple Dominates Online VOD Market

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) now dominates the market for online video-on-demand, as sales of conventional discs like Blu-rays and DVDs continue to fall. The NPD Group’s report explains that discs now account for only 61 percent of the home market, down from 64 percent in 2011. Meanwhile, digital downloads have grown from 14 to 16 percent.

Apple first began offering movie rentals in 2008, followed by 99-cent TV show rentals in 2010. VOD is “widely seen to be the next generation video ownership option,” reports NPD, and while iTunes “dominates the [larger] market for movie electronic sell through, [there is] more competition for iVOD rentals.”

Among rental competitors, iTunes has 45 percent of unit share. In second place is Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Instant Video (18 percent), Walmart’s (NYSE:WMT) Vudu (15 percent), and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Zune/Xbox Video (14 percent). These numbers show that more and more consumers are now using web and mobile-friendly platforms to access movies, rather than dedicated game consoles.